Day

A remembrance for the 191st anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant: Grant’s strengths and his faults have been debated for well over a century. I can relate two little known incidents that illustrate what was, simultaneously, his most disarming and undoing personal trait. ...

When first I heard that Hannibal’s Old Baptist Cemetery has graves of two veterans of the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, I thought to myself, here are men who transplanted themselves to Missouri after the Civil War. Peel back the pages of history, though, and what is...

Part 1 describes the 8th Wisconsin Infantry’s entry into the State of Missouri in October, 1861, with their eagle mascot, “Old Abe.” Old Abe heard the sounds of battle the first time at Fredericktown, Missouri, on October 21, 1861. The Wisconsin men left Missouri for Cairo,...

The most famous Civil War mascot was a young eagle from Wisconsin. “Old Abe,” as he was known by the men of the 8th The Wisconsin boys joined up in northern Wisconsin; they trained in Madison and moved to Chicago as they prepared to enter the war. Their young eagle – seemingly...